Cry Violet brings together a group of artists, Jess Littlewood, Anouk Mercier, Nina Mangalanayagam, Nao Matsunaga, Reginald S Aloysius, whose practice references the Ethnosphere. Cry Violet is curated by Reginald Aloysius as part of a new series of artist curated exhibitions for The Contemporary London.

The Ethnosphere is a term coined by anthropologist and ethnobotanist Wade Davis and The National Geographic. In analogy to the inseparable interconnections of the natural world, the Ethnosphere refers to the cultural and spiritual web of life; the Ethnosphere is the sum of human imagination, encompassing, but not limited to all thoughts, beliefs, myths and institutions. Due to the irresistible need to defend the validity of progress, the Ethnosphere accepts and references the inevitable range of understandings of events that become a society’s history and that are often inconsistent with other historical interpretations.

In reflection of the Ethnosphere, the Cry Violet artists bring their own vision and language to the varying views of cultural landscapes, imagined or real, the decay of ideologies, and the memories of myths and rituals. Together their works showcase and explore the wondrous potential of human imagination, thought and creation.

Jess Littlewood’s digital compositions reference the recycling of ideas and aesthetics on a cultural level. Utopian concepts and myth-making embody fundamental needs that are tied up with humanity’s greatest strengths and weaknesses. Utopia is pursued but beyond reach and therefore may only act as a force of destruction and folly.

Anouk Mercier’s fictional collaged landscapes are reminiscent of 17th and 18th century Romantic landscape etchings. In fact, they are created from fragments of existing images. The merged images reference the past with a futuristic proposition. Mercier’s mesmerising compositions capture a yearning for escapism through the portrayal of fragmented yet beautiful ideals, whilst also exploring the mysterious, the abysmal and the uncanny that often lurks beyond.

Nina Mangalanayagam’s work examines the impact of environment, family and society on our identity. Even the closest interpersonal circles show evidence of social issues. Her video ‘Balancing Act’ uses familiar floor-markings in a sports hall to speak of rules, boundaries and nationality while a voiceover weaves together recollections of exclusion by the artist and others.

Nao Matsunaga is concerned with the cultural, physical and ethnological differences that make up cultural identity. As opposed to highlighting diversity, Matsunga references mankind’s similarities. These similarities often manifest in primal cultures and his ceramic amorphic pieces lend their process to this ‘primal culture’

Through his graphite drawings, Reginald S Aloysius explores emigration and the destruction of tradition. Dust, a floor piece drawing made from rice powder, references the fragility of culture and acts, such as the slashing of drawings with a scalpel, that can’t be undone. However, despite the brutality his stunning works retain an alluring essence.

Cry Violet is a species from the violet genus ‘viola’ extinct in the wild by 1930.

Jonny Green’s paintings are precise renderings of very imprecise, rather expressionistic sculptures. Green’s working process is long and labour intensive, beginning with making miniature sculptural objects fabricated from accumulated everyday and discarded, overlooked objects, such as screws, nails, plasticine and electrical tape. The artist then lives with the pieces, discards or edits them, photographing his few selected pieces then paints them. The point of photography is important in Green’s process as this is the moment where most of the decisions are made in terms of its presentation, reducing the subject from 3 dimension to 2, choosing what will be shown and what will be concealed and the painting process is a documentation of these decisions. Once painted, his objects, once flawed and abject are transformed and take on a monumentality and depth not originally present in their original state. Within his process, Green’s works bring to mind ideas of displacement, otherness, metamorphosis, and the abject and the vulnerable. Green explains his approach as one of chasing the human element within his objects, to tell their story and make their voices heard and validate them. Previously creating the sculptures in a ‘stream of conscious’ working process, Green’s latest works are purposefully directed towards portraiture. His paintings thereby exist as portrait and still life, as anthropomorphized objects crossing over to subject, both animate and inanimate. What we, the viewer are presented with is highly realised pictorially yet intentionally ambiguous, we don’t know what we are looking at, its provenance and what its intention is and it is this ambiguity that challenges us.

Bad To The Bone is Jonny Green's first solo exhibition at the gallery, following the success of his highly acclaimed solo presentation at London Art Fair 2016, Art Projects.

Jonny Green’s work has featured in Art Review, a-n, ArtLyst, Tate etc., The Evening Standard, The Guardian, The Independent, Time Out, FAD, Modern Painters and It's Nice That. His work is collected by Deutsche Bank, Hull City Art Gallery, Sony International and the Susan and Bob Summers Collection.

Born 1966, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom. Lives and works in London.

We are delighted to once again be participating in London Art Fair. We will be exhibiting in Art Projects, stand P3 with a solo presentation of new works by Jonny Green. Please email [email protected] to register your interest.

We will once again be participating in the March instalment of the Affordable Art Fair Battersea. Our exhibited artists include Vasilis Avramidis, Geoff Diego Litherland, Jess Littlewood, Greg Eason, Patrick Milsom, Reginald Aloysius and Jonny Green. We are also delighted to announce that we will be showing Lou Ros for the first time. We will be exhibiting at stand H9.

Please join our mailing list for updates and to receive information about complimentary tickets, which will be available from our gallery in February.

The Contemporary London is delighted to present ‘Outskirts’, our second solo exhibition of exceptional oil paintings on wood and canvas by Vasilis Avramidis. Through the prism of painting, art history and memory, Avramidis’ Outskirts is an intricate and intimate exploration and elevation of neglected and dislocated architectural elements, nature and the quotidian. Following the critical acclaim of his first solo sell-out show, Avramidis’ Outskirts is a demonstration of the power of beautiful and exceptional painting to transform quotidian architecture and nature to an engaging and engulfing visual escapism.

The Contemporary London presents Modern Mythology, an exhibition of new and recent works by Lindsey Bull, Adam Dix and Jess Littlewood, that draws on a rich lexicon of imagery to explore our understanding of the world and the constructed belief systems used to navigate it. Central to each of their works are themes and motifs of ritual, religion and mysticism, drawing on resources from folklore, witchcraft, religion, sci-fi and the occult culminating in a private and mysterious, ethereal and haunting mythology that transcends and overlaps between their collective worlds.

We are delighted to announce that we will once again be participating in Art Projects at London Art Fair 2015, January 20th- 25th at The Business Design Centre. We will be showing new and exciting recent works by the critically acclaimed and award winning Adam Dix and Jess Littlewood. Please click here to preview the works.

Art Projects is a curated showcase of the freshest contemporary art from across the globe, Art Projects features large-scale installations, solo shows and group displays, alongside an extensive Film Programme presenting a selection of experimental film and video work.

Art Projects is situated alongside the main Fair on Gallery Level 1 and The Contemporary London stand is located at P8.

The section has established itself as an important international platform for new galleries to showcase the most stimulating contemporary practice, and continues to garner widespread critical acclaim.

The concept of the exhibition stems from the history and tradition of Miniatures and small Cabinet paintings. From the 15th Century, Cabinet paintings were small paintings collected by the wealthy, traditionally showing full-length figures at a small scale kept in a cabinet, a small and private room, to which only those with whom they were on intimate terms with could be admitted. Miniature artworks would decorate and illustrate hand-written books ('Minaire' to colour with red lead, a practise used for the capital letters in old books). 16-18th Century portrait miniatures were popularly used in the arrangement of noble marriages, to show royal allegiance, for private worship, as items of wealth depicting luxury goods, or as mementos of loved ones carried by soldiers or sailors. These small works have a rich tradition and prevalence in a larger collective art history but within this, the works are intimately bound to individuals, marked by intimate viewing pleasure and the personal relationship between object and viewer. A collection of Small Paintings takes this tradition as its startiong point and asks each artist to reinterpret it within the context of their practice.

Space W10 is ideally located in North Kensington, a short walk from Kensal Green and Kensal Rise stations on the junction of Harrow Road and Ladbroke Grove. We are also well connected to many bus routes and within close proximity to Ladbroke Grove station and the historic and bustling Portobello Road.

The Contemporary London, in partnership with Space W10, is proud to present CLASSIC/ LUXURY / EXOTIC/ ROMANCE (C/L/E/R), a two person show featuring new drawing-based works by Anouk Mercier and Greg Eason.